Home Thoughts from Abroad

So, now I am going to redefine my focus, since I remembered that my reason for wanting to blog was to give some Home Thoughts from Abroad for my British chums when I am here, and Abroad thoughts from home when I am there.
Ok then British chums, I have mastered the wrong side of the road ;) well, kinda, mastered the gears being on the wrong side too. Ah, that's not true of course, it's the steering wheel that's on the wrong side, the gears are in the same place, but have to be worked with t'other hand.
Now, I have wrestled with and bent to my will another piece of great Canadian engineering, the toaster oven. The cookers here (well the ones I have seen) don't have grills on them. And by grills, I mean what we call grills, not what they call them here in Canada, which would be like a large toasted sarnie maker. As usual I digress. So we have a separate device to toast things in, bread, rolls, waffles, but you can also bake things in it, tho I have only tried doing jackets spuds, however, that worked.
Now, how we take certain things for granted. You take for granted that you will be able to select the mince pies and mincmeat that most please you from an awesome array at Sainsburys, Tesco, Marks and Sparks and Waitrose, to name but a few. (You couldn't see this, but I genuflected when I said 'Sainsburys'). Last year I was here for Chrimbo and was fretting about mince pies. There was something sold in some of the shops here as 'mince tarts' and such they were - no lids. So I bought some 'mincemeat' and made my own. Yeuch, ghastly, awful stuff, had corn syrup or some other devil's condiment in it. The whole constistency was syrupy and disgusting.
This year, I decided to make my own, went to Auntie Beeb's webbie and got a recipe, but wait....could I find vegetable suet? Naha. Regular disgusting old suet from around an animal's kidneys? Naha. Manager at Superstore made me spell it and then decided that maybe they had some in the pet section. I ended up with something called vegetable shortening which I then had to freeze and grate into my mincemeat.
So, tomorrow, I make the pastry and assemble the pies. I expect them to be celestial. (This would be a first for my cooking.) I will also be putting up the decs.
One thing we have that is prolly hated by most Canadians, but quite charms me, is a TV channel with just a burning log on it, just to make you feel all cosy through the Chrimbo season.
I see that Tony has got the EU budget negotiations sewn up, and Chirac seems to be behaving himself. Well, tidings of comfort and joy chums. :)